Non-Designer's Presentation Book, The: Principles for effective presentation design, 2nd Edition

Chapter Seven Contrast

Contrast is probably the single most important feature of design that makes things appealing to our eyes. Glancing at the two slides below, both of which say exactly the same thing, to which one do you feel your eyes pulling toward?

This is PowerPoint’s default slide opener. There’s not much contrast on this page—the text is practically all the same size; the colors are similar; the white page is more important than the black type; it’s all rather wimpy. If you show this as your opening slide, you appear wimpy. Tidy, but wimpy.

With a contrast in the size of the type and the strong black/white, your eyes are pulled into ...